the list of forbiddens at Kingfield High School, so the girls made discreet use of the privilege whenever possible.

"Well! What d'you think of it all?" inquired Calla, eagerly questioning the group nearest to her. "I call it ripping."

"Very enterprising of Tatie," conceded Kathleen graciously. "I really shouldn't have thought her capable of it. Where's she been in the holidays to get her ideas so shaken up? We must send her there again if things flag."

"Bags me the orchestra," piped Aldora.

"Oh, the song-drama appeals to me!" squeaked Marjorie Johns.

"'Sh, 'sh! 'Sh, 'sh!" came from the background, as a warning that Miss Pratt, their new form mistress, intended to insist on discipline, and rules or no rules would not countenance a chattering rabble under her very nose if she were obliged to act as escort. Remembering school etiquette the girls restrained their voices in the presence of the teacher, and falling into line marched into Va with due decorum, though once inside the door, with Miss Pratt still outside in the passage, there was a brief and wild scramble for the best desks, and Aldora Dodson had almost pushed Lesbia Ferrars out of a coveted seat when the entrance of authority restored order.

Lesbia, quite upset and panting from the fray, immediately put her books inside the desk as a sign of possession, and scribbling her name on a gummed label pasted it on to the lid rather ostentatiously, with an eye of triumph in the direction of Aldora, who pretended to take no notice. It meant much to Lesbia to secure that particular desk. She had always marked it for her own. As a junior she had often peeped into the room and had made up her mind that if she were ever moved so high up the school as Va she should like to sit in the seat next the window. The Kingfield High School did not adopt the horrible system of coating the glass with white paint, so there was a clear and uninterrupted view over walls, and across gardens, to the winding river and yellowing woods beyond. Lesbia's æsthetic soul felt that that view would compensate for many disagreeable things that would probably happen in the course of the coming year. She was not particularly clever at lessons, and might expect future squalls. To look over such a landscape would be a comfort after Miss Pratt's chidings. Miss Pratt had a reputation in the school for tartness of manner, though she was an excellent teacher. Her voice, sharp-clipped, business-like, and unconciliatory, grated upon Lesbia, who was very sensitive to sounds. Poor Lesbia was at the difficult age when we are sensitive in many respects. The trouble was that most people called her "thin-skinned". There are always two ways of describing the same characteristic. But as Lesbia, with all her faults and virtues, is going to be our heroine she had better have a chapter quite to herself.

CHAPTER II

The Oldest Pupil

Though Lesbia Ferrars might not be gifted with a good memory, or a mathematical brain, or a talent for languages, or even a great capacity for work, or any other special attribute to place her among the stars of her form, in one solitary respect she could always score over the rest of the school. She was the oldest pupil. Not indeed in years—there is an immense shade of difference between oldest and eldest—for she was not yet sixteen, while Rose Stirling and Mabel Andrews in the Sixth were approaching their eighteenth birthdays. She happened to have been longer at the school than anybody else. She had joined as a tiny child, and the contemporaries of her first year had all left. Even Theodora Johnson, the head girl, who could boast a nine years record, had to yield precedence to Lesbia in a question of "oldest inhabitant". It was a point upon which Lesbia prided herself immensely. Ever since she had been the baby of the kindergarten she had loved the school with a great loyalty, and was prepared to stand up for its merits against all detractors. It had become such a point of honour with her that she was almost stubborn about it, and would have waged its battles as blindly as the traditional cavalier who fought for the crown though it hung in a bush.

Lesbia, at fifteen and three-quarters on the great clock of life, was a rather picturesque little person, slim and not over-tall, with large dreamy eyes that held shining sparks when she laughed, and brown hair with a curl in it, and teeth that seemed more like a first set than a second, they were so small and even. The outside of her might have belonged indifferently to north, south, east, or west, but the inside of her was Celtic to the core. Both Irish and Highland blood ran in her veins, and unknown ancestors had handed down to her that heritage of laughter and tears, that joyous zest of life and keen intensity of feeling, that fairy glamour which may transfigure the commonest things, or beguile the heart to waste its devotion upon trifles, which is the birthright of those whose forbears, in the dim forgotten twilight of our island's history, kept their courts at Tara and Camelot and left their wealth of legend behind them.

Lesbia lived in a house in Denham Terrace with her stepbrother Paul Hilton. Fate had tossed her about like a tennis ball, though so far always kindly. Her own father had died when she was a baby, and while she was still quite tiny her mother had been married again to Mr. Hilton, a widower with a son of twenty. In his vacations from college Paul had made rather a pet of his little stepsister, and later on his kindness was put to a practical test. An epidemic of virulent influenza swept away in a single week both Mr. and Mrs. Hilton, and Lesbia, at eight years old, found herself an orphan. She had no very near relations, and the third and fourth cousins whom she possessed were not at all anxious to adopt her, so Paul, practical, unimaginative, common-sense Paul, took over the responsibility of her maintenance as a matter of course. Neither he, nor the pretty little bride whom he soon brought home, understood Lesbia in the least, her temperament held unknown qualities which their more direct minds could never grasp, but they were good to her, and accepted her without question as a member of the household, and as much a legacy as the family furniture.

The memory of her early days had grown rather hazy, and Lesbia was so accustomed to Paul and Minnie and the three small children who had arrived at Denham Terrace that no other life felt particularly possible. She was happy at school, and she rubbed along well at home. There was not surely a girl in her form who could claim more.

This first day of the new term had seemed fortunate to Lesbia. She had been raised to the honour of Va instead of being relegated with more backward girls to Vb, a contingency she had dreaded but half anticipated, and she had secured the very desk she had coveted for years. She came downstairs therefore at four o'clock with a feeling of much satisfaction. Even Aldora, whose wrath was short lived, had already forgiven the scrimmage and was friendly. Mentally Lesbia was purring.

"Wait for me for five minutes and I'll walk home with you," volunteered Aldora. "I have to take a letter from Mother to Miss Tatham, and she'll probably want to write an answer and send it by me."

And Lesbia, who loathed waiting for anybody, nevertheless agreed, as a kind of recompense to Aldora for having ousted her out of the best desk. It was a sunny afternoon so she went into the garden. There was a pleasant corner there with an artificial pond, and bushes, and flights of steps