awful desolation and despair when
I'd gone, because Auntie Anna began her conversation all over again with
old Barnaby, and the Beast instead of having the sense to join in it
went and sat with Jill all the evening. Which shows his puerrility and
blightedness. She sang to him too, and he got up to go the moment she had
finished which was beastly rude, I think. If he did think she sang badly
he might have played up better. But he's a beast, and you can't get over
that. He's very ugly and sulky looking, and he's about fifty I should
think, but Jill says not so old. That's her grown-up charitableness
which she can't get over. Anyhow----'

The mist in Barbara's eyes threatened to become so serious at this point
that she put down Kit's letter hastily and returned to her own. Whatever
happened, she was not going to cry before all these girls, who never
understood anything she did. She was hard at work again by the time Ruth
Oliver pushed aside the curtain and looked in from the next room.

'Barbara Berkeley!' she called. 'Has any one seen Barbara Berkeley?'

One or two of the girls looked round casually at the slim figure on the
floor, but nobody roused her. Ruth Oliver was too good-natured a person to
inspire much authority in the junior playroom, and the children would
sooner risk her displeasure any day than Jean Murray's. If it had been
any other girl in the First, half a dozen of them would have hastened to
do her bidding at once.

'Angela!' called Ruth, impatiently, coming into the room as she spoke;
'don't you know where the Babe is? She has got to go and see the doctor
at once.'

On the other side of the curtain, both Barbara and her nickname met with
the popularity that was denied to them in the junior playroom; and the
note of familiarity in the elder girl's words sent Angela's impudent chin
up in the air.

'We don't know anybody of that name in here,' she said, and went on
talking flippantly to the girl beside her.

Ruth Oliver was not born to be a leader, and she was horribly afraid of
some of the younger ones, who had been quick enough to detect this long
ago, and naturally presumed upon it. But there were limits even to her
endurance, and she laid a stern hand on Angela's shoulder.

'If you don't want to be reported to Margaret Hulme, you'd better fetch
Barbara to me at once,' she commanded, with a firmness she certainly did
not feel.

Angela rose with a very bad grace, and strolled as slowly as she da