For a week life went on with the greatest regularity at Durracombe. Every morning the girls were called by Jessop promptly at half-past seven. They started for school at twenty minutes to nine, returned home for lunch, rushed back to The Moorings by 2.30, did their preparation and practising in the evenings, and went to bed at nine o'clock. Uncle David was nearly always out, or busy in the surgery, and Aunt Nellie sat by the fire, knitting or taking little naps. She would ask very kindly about their lessons, then, hardly giving them time to answer, would plunge into reminiscences of her boys' schooldays. Life, for her, still centred round Percy, Richard, and Cyril. When the girls wanted to talk they went to Jessop. It was to her they poured out their experiences of their new school, and she listened with the flattering interest of one who really enjoys hearing. She never read any books, so perhaps the little adventures described humorously by Mavis or Merle took the place of chapters in a serial story. She was familiar directly with the names of all the girls and teachers at The Moorings, and most delightfully ready to "take sides", and like those whom they liked and agree about the iniquities of those who offended them. For this first week had not been all plain sailing. It is often really easier to get on in a big school than a little one. There is more elbow-room among two hundred girls than among two dozen. Nobody except Iva Westwood had seemed particularly pleased to welcome them. Opal Earnshaw palpably resented their presence. "Miss Pollard is only supposed to take twenty pupils," she remarked, on the day after their arrival. "I know she refused two other girls, so I can't think why she should have broken her rule." "But those girls would have been boarders," objected Iva. "Well, where's the difference?" "A great deal when it means two extra beds in a dormitory." "It means two extra seats in a room that's already overcrowded," declared Opal loftily. "If the school is going to take any more new girls it had better build an annexe and let them have classes there." "Sorry to be on the earth!" said Merle sarcastically. "Perhaps you'd like us to sit inside the cupboard? We shouldn't crowd you out there." Opal looked her up and down, from her velvet hair-band to the tips of her shoes, then she gave a kind of snort. "I suppose you think yourself ever so clever," she retorted. "Girls from big schools generally give themselves airs." "Other people can give themselves airs," snapped Merle, warming to the battle. "Big schools teach manners at any rate!" "Oh, we don't mean anything against _this_ school," hurriedly put in Mavis, who generally tried to take the edge off her sister's cutting speeches. "We think it's going to be quite jolly. I'm sorry if we've taken the desks where you've had your museum, but where _are_ we to keep our books and things?"