School and try and forget her troubles. It would be delightful to
go back there again. Although it was little more than a fortnight since
she had left, the time, with its intervening storms, had seemed years.

Marion had given a brief account to VA of her running away from the
vessel, but the news had not circulated outside her own form, so to most
of the girls her reappearance in the cloak-room on Monday morning
created quite a sensation.

"Lesbia Ferrars! It's never _you_!"

"Where did you spring from?"

"I thought you'd gone to Canada!"

"Why! You said good-bye to everybody!"

"How is it you've come back?"

"Aren't you going to Canada after all?"

"Are you staying on at the High?"

"Did you go and come back again?"

So many questions were hurled at her head that Lesbia did not attempt to
answer them in detail. She replied, a little shamefacedly, that her
plans had been suddenly changed, and that she was now living with
cousins in Kingfield. She realized, from the girls' faces, that her
return was considered rather tame. She even wondered whether she ought
to keep the good-bye present which they had made her. It was certainly
hers by false pretences. Yet it would be hardly possible to give it
back.

"There'll be a scrimmage with Laura Birkshaw!" remarked Etta Pearson.
"She's been going on with your stencilling. And a nice smudge she's made
of it too, in places."

"Aldora Dodson's got your desk by the window," piped Calla Wilkins; "I
don't believe she'll turn out for anybody."

"I shan't ask her to," said Lesbia briefly, as she walked upstairs.

Her pride prevented her from satisfying her schoolfellows' freely
expressed curiosity, and, after a little teasing, they let her alone.
They gathered enough from Marion to understand the main outline of the
situation, and simply accepted the fact of her return to school. Between
Marion and Lesbia there was a species of embarrassment. Marion could not
help knowing that it was largely owing to her well meant but very
foolishly expressed sympathy that her friend had performed such a madcap
act. She remembered that in an impulsive moment she had even suggested
Lesbia living at her home, an offer which her mother had certainly not
endorsed. She felt sorry for her friend, but the sense that she had
failed in her crucial test made her shy. Lesbia, with a memory of Mrs.
Morwood's blank dismay at her arrival, and the relief with which she had
turned her over to the Pat