Her first Waterloo had been encountered early that morning when, feeling lonelier than she ever had felt in all her life, she dressed early and ran out to the stable to visit Apache. He seemed as lonely and forlorn as his little mistress and thinking to cheer him as well as herself, she had led him forth by his halter and together they had enjoyed one grand prance down the driveway. Unluckily, Miss Baylis had seen this harmless little performance, and not being able to appreciate perfect human and equine grace, had been promptly scandalized. It was at once reported to Miss Woodhull and Beverly was informed that "such hoydenish actions should be relegated to the uncultured herd." Beverly did not ask whether she must number herself among that herd but the fact had been implied nevertheless, and she smarted under what she felt to be an unmerited and unduly severe rebuke, if not an open insult. She was still smarting as she sat hidden in her nook, and sorely in need of an antidote for the smart. Presently it came in the homeopathic form of like curing like. CHAPTER VI NEW FRIENDS Naturally, no real work was done on opening day. Miss Woodhull, stately and austere sat in her office directing her staff with the air of an empress. One of the old girls declared that all she lacked was a crown and sceptre, and the new ones who entered that office to be registered, "tagged" the above mentioned girl called it, came out of it feeling at least three inches shorter than when they entered. During her reign in Leslie Manor, Miss Woodhull had grown much stouter and one seeing her upon this opening day would scarcely have recognized in her the slender, hollow-eyed worn-out woman who had opened its doors to the budding girlhood of the land nearly thirty years before. She was now a well-rounded, stately woman who carried herself with an air of owning the state of her adoption, and looked comparatively younger in her fifty-eighth year than she had in her twenty-eighth.