all be kind to her," said
Rosamund. "I have a great deal to say to you; but don't keep me now. She
has come, and so has dear little Agnes Frost, and--oh! do ask the other
girls to be kind, and not to take any special notice. You will, won't
you?"

"I'm sure I'd do anything for you," said Laura. "I think you were
splendid all through. I cannot tell you how I have admired you, and how
I spoke to mother about you in the holidays; and mother said that though
you had not done exactly right, yet you were the finest girl she had
ever heard of or come across, and she was very glad to think that you
and I might be in a sort of way friends."

"Well, let us be real friends," said Rosamund affectionately. "Now,
don't keep me any longer. I have as much as I can do to get my couple
ready to make a respectable appearance at supper."

Laura ran off to inform her school-fellows that the noted, the terrible
Irene was in very truth a pupil at Mrs. Merriman's school. The girls, of
course, had heard that Irene was coming, and that Rosamund had been
forgiven, and, notwithstanding her disobedience, was returning to the
school. But although they believed the latter part of this
intelligence, they doubted the former, thinking it quite impossible that
any sane people would admit such a character as Irene into their midst.
But when Laura came downstairs and told her news, the girls looked up
with more or less interest in their faces.

Annie Millar, who was Laura's special friend, said that she was glad.

"She needn't suppose that I'll be afraid of her," said Annie.

"And she needn't think that I'll be afraid of her," said Phyllis Flower.
"She may try her toads and her wasps if she likes on me; but she won't
find they have much effect."

"Oh, do stop talking!" said Laura. "Can't you understand that if Irene
is to be a good girl we must not bring things of that sort up to her? I
believe she will be good, and I think Rosamund is just splendid. Yes,
Lucy, what did you say?"

Now, Lucy had up to the present been one of Laura's great friends. Their
mothers had been friends in the old days, and the clever, bright,
intelligent Laura suited Lucy to perfection. But Lucy had imbibed all
the traditions with regard to the willful Irene, and was horrified at
the thought of having her now in the school. She was also angry at
Rosamund's being reinstated; in short, she was by no means in a good
temper. She thought herself badly treated that the news of t