ut
and buy it for me? I can't make any Fudge till I get it, and I
reck--that is to say, I mean to teach those girls to make Fudge. They've
not tasted it."

Miss Poppleton glared at her irrepressible pupil with a glance that
would have quelled Hetty Hancock or Lennie Chapman, but Gipsy did not
flinch.

"They've actually never tasted Fudge!" she repeated, with a smile of
pity for their ignorance.

But Miss Poppleton's patience was at an end.

"Gipsy Latimer, understand once for all that these things are not
allowed at Briarcroft. While you are here you will be expected to keep
the rules of the school, or, if you break them, you will be punished.
Leave my study at once, and don't report yourself here again until you
are sent for."

Gipsy left the room as requested, but she stood for a moment or two on
the doormat outside, shaking her head solemnly.

"It's a bad lookout!" she said to herself. "I'm afraid there are
breakers ahead. That's not a very difficult matter to foresee. She's got
a temper! I've not had any previous experience of English schools, but
it rather appears as if this one's run on the lines of a reformatory. If
I don't want to get myself into trouble, I shall have to lie low, and
mind what I'm doing. Well, I've sampled the teachers, and I've sampled
the boarders. Now for the day girls and my new Form!"

Gipsy had already made the acquaintance of the elect twenty who were to
be her house companions, but that was a comparatively slight affair
compared with the ordeal of her introduction to the school as a whole.
In spite of her outward appearance of sangfroid, she felt her heart
thumping a little as she marched into the large lecture hall for "call
over". It needs a certain courage to face seventy-two critical
strangers, and her past experience had taught her that a new girl on her
first day is like "goods on approval", and has to run the gauntlet of
public opinion. She tried to look airy and unembarrassed, and talked
desperately to Lennie Chapman, who had been told off to "personally
conduct" her to her Form; but all the same she was conscious that she
was the observed of all observers. It was only natural that the little,
erect, dark figure, with its bright eyes and big scarlet hair ribbons,
should attract attention. Gipsy was about as different from the
ordinary run of British schoolgirls as a parakeet is from a flock of
pigeons; and the others were quick to note the difference.

"I say, who's th