nothing new in _that_' interrupted Jean, looking superior.
'Everybody knows that the Babe----' Here she caught Kit's eye, and
stopped hastily. She was not sure that she liked Barbara Berkeley's
clever brother; he had such a queer way of looking at one. Nobody in
the junior playroom ever made her feel like that.

Barbara was in deep perplexity. 'Is that why every one clapped, then, on
the night of the display?' she said wonderingly.

Christopher looked in mock reproach at Angela. 'You shouldn't have told
her,' he said. 'She won't be fit to speak to for a month now.'

'Oh, don't, Kit!' retorted Barbara, more from habit than because she
really resented his words. As a matter of fact she had hardly heard them,
for she was busy puzzling things over in her mind. 'I can't think what it
all means,' she went on; 'every one used to complain of me so. There was
Mary Wells, for instance----'

'Oh, Mary Wells _adores_ you!' cried Angela, in her effusive manner. 'She
said so directly you broke your leg.'

Barbara puzzled still more. 'I don't understand about Margaret Hulme a
bit, though,' she observed. 'Only the day before the display, she told
me I was a little nuisance, because I didn't hear her the first time she
spoke to me; so of course I thought she hated me!'

'That was before you broke your leg, though,' explained Jean.

'She _adores_ you now,' added Angela.

Kit and Bobbin burst out laughing, but Barbara went on puzzling, and did
not notice them. Adoration at Wootton Beeches seemed to spring from the
strangest causes. After being more or less neglected for a whole term
by the greater part of her school-fellows, it was at least surprising
to be suddenly placed on a pinnacle of fame, just because she had broken
her leg. If she had only guessed at Angela's envy of that same broken
leg--an envy that was probably shared by half the junior playroom--she
might have been still further amazed.

The boys strolled indoors to find Auntie Anna and to beg for tea in the
garden; and the conversation under the cedar tree grew more intimate.
Jean came out of her shell, and talked about her home in Edinburgh in a
way she had never done before, even on half-holidays at school; and
Angela, in her turn, gave an elaborate description of her eldest
sister's drawing-room dress, and of the longing it had aroused in her
own frivolous little mind to be presented at Court herself.

'And so I shall be, some day; mother says so!' she announced,