ix Juniors subsided into
their sitting-room. Here, at least, was something happening.

"Who is she?"

"Where's she come from?"

"Is she a new girl?"

"Haven't heard of anybody new coming. Have you?"

"She looks jolly."

"I hope she's going to stay."

"I say, let's go downstairs and ask if anyone knows anything about her,"
said Hetty Hancock, suiting her action to her words, and hurrying out of
the room with her five schoolmates following close at her heels. But
nobody knew; not even the Seniors could give the least information.
Indeed, the six who had seen the newcomer from the window had the
advantage, for none of the others had witnessed the arrival. The girls
were consumed with curiosity. A scout, who ventured ten steps into the
forbidden territory of the front hall, came back and reported that
talking could be heard in the drawing-room.

"A big, deep voice, like a man's, and Poppie's saying 'Yes'. I daren't
stop more than a second; but somebody's there, you may be sure of that.
And the box is standing in the vestibule too."

"I believe she's come to stay!" said Dilys.

"The cab's waiting at the door still, though," objected Norah Bell. "She
may be going back in it."

At tea-time Miss Poppleton's accustomed place was empty, and speculation
ran high among her pupils. All kinds of wild rumours circulated round
the table, but there was no means of verifying any of them, and the
girls were obliged to go to preparation with their curiosity still
unsatisfied. At seven o'clock, however, when the Juniors had finished
their work and trooped back to their own sitting-room, they found the
mystery solved. In front of the fire, warming her hands between the bars
of the high fender, and looking as comfortably at home as if she owned
the place, stood the stranger who had skipped so quickly out of the cab
that afternoon. She was a girl who, wherever she was seen, would have
attracted notice--slim and erect and trim in figure, and a decided
brunette, a real "nut-brown maid", with a pale olive complexion, the
brightest of soft, dark, southern eyes, and a quantity of fluffy, silky,
dusky curls, tied--American fashion--with two big bows of very wide
scarlet ribbon, one on the top of her head and one at the nape of her
neck. She smiled as the others entered, showing an even little set of
white teeth, and four roguish dimples made their appearance at the
corners of her mouth. She seemed to have assumed proprietorship of the