"They're all mixed up. We packed in half an hour. I just flung in the first things that came to hand. Cousin Cora promised to send on the rest of my luggage after me. If she doesn't, I'd best 'phone." "You'd have a little difficulty to do that," said Loveday dryly. "D'you mean to say there's no 'phone here, or"--looking round the room--"no electric light either?" "Certainly not. We go to bed with candles." "Well! I wanted mediaeval ways, and it looks as if I was going to get them. It'll be rather a stunt to go to bed by candle-light. Are there any ghosts about this place? Or skeletons built into the wall? Or dungeons with rusting chains? Or mysterious footsteps? Oh! I thought there'd have been at least something spooky in a house that claims to be six hundred years old." Diana's cabin trunk arrived in the course of a few days. She sorted out a selection of her numerous belongings, arranged them in her limited number of drawers, and consigned the surplus back to her boxes to be stored in the attic. This done, and a telegram received to announce the safe arrival of her father and mother in Paris, she seemed prepared to settle down. Her fellow intermediates, biased largely by her generosity in the matter of chocolates, gave her, on the whole, a favourable reception. Wendy even went further, and proffered friendship. "You're just the jolly kind of girl I like," she explained. "I think we might have some topping times together, and wake up the school. Things are apt to get a little dull sometimes." Diana nodded intelligently. "I know. It was just the same at my last school. Everyone got into a sort of stick-in-the-mud mood, and one felt it was only _kind_ to stir them up. I guess I did it!" "I shouldn't wonder if you did," twinkled Wendy. "I vote we make an alliance, and, if one of us thinks of any rather ripping rag, she just tells the other, and we'll play it off together." "Right you are! Let's shake on it!" agreed Diana, extending a small, slim hand, with a garnet birthstone-ring on the middle finger. The little American did not fit into her niche at Pendlemere without encountering a certain amount of what her schoolmates considered necessary discipline for a novice. She had to go through an ordeal of chaff and banter. She was known by the sobriquet of "Stars and Stripes", or "The Yank", and good-natured fun was poked at her transatlantic accent. She took it good-temperedly, but with a readiness of repartee that laid the jokers flat. "One can't get much change out of Diana," commented Magsie, after an unsuccessful onslaught of teasing. "I think she's a scream," agreed Vi. The baffling part of the new schoolmate was that her powers of acting were so highly developed that it was impossible to tell whether she was serious or playing a part. She "took in" her teasers times out of number, and in fairness they deserved all they got. Towards the end of the first week she came into the intermediate room one morning fondling a letter.