of my clothes afterwards. I came away in rather a hurry."

"You're late though," said Connie Camden. "It's nearly three weeks
since we started the term. We came back on the 14th of September."

"Why didn't you come then?" asked Nina Forster.

"I don't know. Father only decided to send me a week ago."

"Well, you can try to catch us up, but we've done twenty pages of the
new history," said Marian Woodhouse, "and read the first canto of
_Marmion_. We shall have to tell you the story."

"I know it, thank you," replied Sylvia. "I had it with my governess at
home."

"Oh!" said Marian, looking rather disgusted. "But I don't suppose you
took any of the notes, and Miss Arkwright explains it quite
differently from anyone else. What sums are you at?"

"Weights and measures," said Sylvia.

"Why, we did those in the baby class! We're doing fractions now."

"We've only just begun them," said Linda. "Don't bother about lessons,
Marian. We've barely ten minutes before prep, and I want to show
Sylvia her locker."

The six children who, with Linda and Sylvia, made up Class III at Miss
Kaye's, were all very much of an age. Hazel Prestbury was the eldest;
a tall fair girl of twelve, with regular features and a quantity of
pretty light hair which fell below her waist, and of which she was
exceedingly proud. She could be rather clever when she troubled to
work, but as that did not often happen she rarely stood high in her
form, though she was well advanced in music, and played better than
many girls of thirteen and fourteen. Marian Woodhouse, only an inch
shorter, had a good complexion, and curly ruddy hair plaited in a
thick pigtail. So far she had easily kept head of the class, for she
was bright, and such a good guesser that she often contrived to make
Miss Arkwright think she knew more than was really the case. She liked
to manage other people, to take the lead, and keep everybody up to the
mark, and was more of a favourite with the teachers than she was with
her companions. There could have been no greater contrast to her than
her sister Gwennie, a round, rosy dumpling of a girl, so gentle and
quiet and unassuming that she scarcely ever seemed to have an opinion
of her own, being content to follow Marian blindly, whom she
considered the cleverest person in the whole world. The girls often
called the pair "Voice and Echo", because poor Gwennie so faithfully
upheld everything which her elder sister said, no matter whether it